Stacks (STX)

Thoughts on Stacks (blockstack:native) and markets:

- The four year cycle stays true. Bitcoin highs are muted but lows also likely muted.

- The AI models discovering bugs issue is real. Flight to safety will be a trend to watch.

- Bitcoin stayed simple with verifiable and transparent supply. All additional functionality can be built on top.

- Stacks optimized for safety and went for a decidable language (Clarity). Safety will end up being *the* thing to optimize for.

- There is likely going to be one maybe two Bitcoin L2s that take all/most of the traffic.

- After Bitcoin gets a quantum upgrade, depending on new signatures, Bitcoin bandwidth will likely decrease by 50%-97%; highlighting increased need for L2s.

- Bitcoin staking is a $100B+ market with increased demand for BTC on BTC yield coming from institutions and DATs.

- Stacks has seen two cycles before (1) mainnet launch (BTC smart contracts), (2) Nakamoto launch (speed & sBTC), now we’re working on (3) Bitcoin Protocol Bonds launch that unlock...

When the Dotcom bubble popped, everything nuked.

→ The Nasdaq dropped 77% by October 2002
→ Webvan filed for Chapter 11 and laid off 2,000 people
→ Oracle crashed by 80%

But the internet kept growing, and by 2025, 74% of the world was online.

I think $STX fits into that survival bucket because the Stacks ecosystem is focused on one of the clearest verticals in crypto: bringing DeFi to Bitcoin.

@Stacks has a $27M 2026 operating budget and a $25M working-capital allocation for engineering, security, growth, and DeFi liquidity.

So yeah, even though consolidation sucks, it does have a good runway to survive the chop and keep building into one of the main Bitcoin DeFi plays.

Disclosure: I'm a long-time $STX holder.

Crypto is entering a consolidation phase.

In the dotcom era, the markets simultaneously (a) overpriced the losers and (b) underpriced the eventual winners.

The winners and the market size turned out to be way bigger than we imagined.

Top crypto projects with sufficient cash and runway to dominate their respective verticals will sweep the upcoming market.